Elgg Voices Google

MMS has been one of the constant feature requests since we launched Google Voice and we’ve been hard at work trying to make this happen.

Today, we’re happy to announce that we’ve made the first step in our efforts to bring this feature to our users. Google Voice users are now able to receive pictures and other multimedia messages from Sprint subscribers. The multimedia attachments will display on their mobile forwarding phone and in their email inbox when they enable text to email forwarding in their Google Voice settings. We are also planning on making them display in the Google Voice inbox.

We are working with other mobile operators to make this work across all mobile phones and will update our users as more and more operators offer support for this.

Posted by Ilya Frank, Senior Software Engineer

If your looking to increase your websites presense on the internet we will provide you with a detailed insight into the world of Search Engine Optimization, so let us begin with this broken down introduction to SEO. In the current age having your site online is only one step towards making your mark on the internet, it’s incredibly easy to get online but once you get online you will probably encounter a common dilemma, where are the visitors? Undoubtedly you have joined the many millions of websites that fall into the abyss of the search engine’s, if you are fortunate to get listed by them at all. You may not think search engine positioning affects you but if you own or operate a website, it does. If you any ambitions for your website then you have to cater for this increasingly important webmaster role.

Search engine optimization is more than making your site rank well in the major search engines, it’s about integrating it seamlessly into your page design without your visitors even being aware exists. SEO is an on going task that all webmasters need to undertake in order to keep reasonable positioning within search engines and recieve the subsequent traffic it brings. A common mistake many people make is to optimize their site once and believe that they can hold a rank, this might be true for some obscure key words but there is so much information flowing around the internet that there will always be someone willing to take your site on for rankings.

It is important to remember the complex algorithms search engines use to determine your position calculate thousands of different factors, you cannot rely on one to keep ahead of the game. SEO Assistance will bring you an indepth view into the world of search engine positioning, we have broken it down into easily digestible sections so you can move your site up inch by inch. One downside to keeping your website in the public eye is that it requires a constant effort but if you are planning to sell a product or keep your website active, it is definitely worth it.

1. Step One: Select right keyword for web SEO Optimization.
You must choose your keywords carefully. This is the most important step of the SEO. Wrong or ineffective keywords mean invalid keyword optimization. You should find popular keywords and phrases related to your business, then know search popularity and competition number of every keywords. The keywords with more popularity and less competition will be your targeted keyword phrases.

Resources:

Best Promotion Keywords – http://www.websitepromotionsoft.com/bestpromotionkeyword.html
Overture – http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Google – https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox

2. Step Two: Optimize your website ranking factors.

Once you have finished keyword analysis and selected specified keywords, you should optimize your web site to improve search engine position. The important ranking factors including website title tags, description tags, meta keyword tags, heading text, link url, link text, image alt, comment and web page body text.

Every keyword frequency, weight, size, prominence
and proximity all affect the ranking. You should optimize all these factors carefully. The top 10 ranking website content and ranking factors will give your more help.

Resources:
Web Optimization Angel – http://www.websitepromotionsoft.com/weboptimizationangel.html
WebPositionGold – http://www.webposition.com/d2.pl?r=TBI-55EC&FN=download.htm (more…)

Back links are an important part of most successful websites on the net and are almost essential in order to get reasonable listings on search engines. Back links are quite simply, links from other websites. As part of most search engines algorithms it is obvious to see they rely heavily largely upon the amount of quality incoming links your website has. I would like to reiterate, quality links, there are many unscrupulous link farms and link schemes that if you participate in, will get you banned from the major search engines. Search engines see links from other, usually established, websites as a mark of respect and that you probably have something to offer.

If you your website is just starting out or you are new to the world of SEO then you should know that back links are a crucial part to a website, almost as much as any content on it. With just one link to you from another indexed site you can usually get a few search engine bots visiting your site within hours instead of days, or even weeks through manual submission. Back links usually mean that you can achieve some reasonable key words in some search engines within weeks if you have a good quality site.

Armed with the above information it is easy to see how vital back links are, so now you are wondering where to get them. Well you are advised to stay away from disreputable sources like I previously mentioned but they rarely work any way, instead you should visit places like the Sitepoint Forums & WebHostingTalk where many professional webmasters can be found. It is recommended you aim to link swap with websites that have a better google page rank than yourself

For the third installment of Google Voice user stories, we heard from Grant Barrett, the co-host of A Way with Words, a radio show about words and language.

Tell us about your organization
A Way with Words is run by a nonprofit with an educational mission: to further understanding of language, to encourage life-long learning, and to promote human understanding through better communication. It airs in 73 different cities and at a lot of different times, so, our toll-free number is a necessity. We can’t be there at all hours to answer.

How are you using Google Voice?
Calls go from the toll-free number to a local number to voicemail — Google Voice — where we archive them and use them to plan future shows. Five of us look at the transcripts and listen to the calls. We use the notes field to indicate which are feedback for follow-ups, which are new questions that we might want to turn into segments, and which are stories from listeners who want to be heard but maybe don’t want to be on the air. We mix those with what we get via email and social media, and in that way put together a show.

Now that we have more than 2800 calls saved on Google Voice we can use it like we already use our email: as a repository of questions and comments from listeners. So if one person asks about, say, why bell peppers are called mangoes in part of the country, we can search through the voicemail transcripts (which, while imperfect, are good enough), and our email, and begin to get an idea of what a lot of people want to know about that topic. It helps tailor each segment of the show.

There is an insatiable need — a hunger, even — to have questions about language answered. People ask us more questions in a given week than we could possibly ever answer in a weekly, hour-long show. But we’re doing more than we were before, and Google Voice is a part of that.

If you or someone you know is using Google Voice in a unique way, we’d love to hear about it! Fill out this short form and your story may get featured on the Google Voice blog.

Posted by Michael Bolognino, Product Marketing Manager